


River Crossing

by UnidentifiedPie



Category: Gintama
Genre: Afterlife AU, Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Yorozuya Family, this is ridiculously happy for an afterlife au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 13:57:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14854100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnidentifiedPie/pseuds/UnidentifiedPie
Summary: This isn't heaven or paradise, but sometimes...Sometimes it's close enough.(AU in which Gintoki guides souls to the afterlife, and Kagura and Shinpachi are mostly-kinda-not-really dead. According to Kagura, it doesn't count if they're not actuallyinthe afterlife yet. Which is why they refuse to get in.)





	River Crossing

He finds the girl standing by the misty riverbank, young and slim and bright-eyed, not much older than eleven. She has her hands clenched into little white balls by her sides and her eyes are wet blue skies. 

"Where am I?" she demands, as Gintoki rows his boat towards the bank of long-overgrown grass. 

Gintoki shrugs, dipping his oar into the water with a soft splash. "Who knows? It's whatever you make of it. Death, paradise, heaven, hell."

"I'm dead?" Her eyes are so wide now, face like paper - thin and white and liable to tear. "Then-"

"I'm escorting you to the other side," Gintoki says. "Hop on."

Blue eyes narrow into glowing, determined slits. "What if I don't?"

"Then you'll get lost in the mist and keep ending up right back here until you give in and cross, or demons will catch your soul and drag you to hell."

"I'll take my chances."

"You really shouldn't-" Gintoki starts to say, but she's already disappeared into the mist. He sighs and settles down to wait. 

The water of the lake is glassy and eerily still. He glances down at its marbled surface, and it shows nothing beyond his reflection, like a mirror of obsidian. 

 

-x-

 

"Oi, brat, how many more circles do you want to make?" Gintoki asks, when she reappears for the seventh time. "You're not going to get anywhere, you know?" 

“Shut up!” She whirls around, storming back into the white fog. 

She returns five more times before she narrows her eyes at him, blue fire raging in her irises. "What happens if I beat you?"

"Demons invade and everyone dies," Gintoki says. He sighs and stands anyway, reaching for the bokuto at his side. 

She shrugs - "They're already dead." - and lunges.

 

-x-

 

Gintoki ties her up in heavy-duty rope and rows her to the other end of the lake. She lies on the boat’s old wood floor, cursing him for being a bastard and a jerk. 

"Brat, if I hadn't, demons would have caught you and brought you to hell, dammit!"

"You made me leave my family!"

"There was no way back!"

And he sort of hates the way her fire-bright eyes falter, the way they flicker down to dying embers and her teeth sink into her bottom lip. The way she looks far too young and far too small.

"Look," he says, trying for placating. Even after all this time, he hasn't gotten used to comforting children who died too young. "Maybe your family will come here, when they die. Don't you want to be able to greet them with a smile on your face when they do?"

She looks up at him, eyes wide and hopeful. And Gintoki hates himself a little for that, too, when she asks, "Does everyone go to the same place?" 

Gintoki looks away. "No." 

Her eyes go a little dim and her teeth dig into her lip. Tied up as she is, she looks so terribly fragile - hurting and small. 

"There's still hope, though," he says.

They pass out of the mist. The sky is the same colour as the girl's eyes, and the sunlight is warm on his skin. The water beneath the boat turns crystal-clear, and Gintoki can see right down to the sand at the bottom of the lake. 

In the distance, there’s an island - a pale gold moon of a beach, with an emerald forest growing at its heart. 

"I'm Kagura," the girl offers finally, grudgingly. 

"Gintoki," he says. "Sakata Gintoki."

 

-x-

 

He thought that he could leave her on the shore and be done with it - that she’d go into the forest of the island like everyone else, and move on to her afterlife. 

He’s not sure where souls go when they step onto the light-dappled dirt path of the forest, but he knows what hell feels like, and this isn’t it. This place is… bright, and warm. The birds sing noisily, off-tune, but they _sing_.

He’d thought that Kagura would see that soft warmth and give in - would start her afterlife and be content. Instead, she plants herself on the beach, insisting that if she isn’t _in_ the afterlife yet, then there must be some way for her to get back. Gintoki had ignored her, at first, but now she’s started trying to coerce souls to stay with her and “revolt against the unjust rulings of the afterlife!” 

And _dammit all_ but she reminds him of someone else, too - of long hair and _I’ll be your general_ but that. That was a long time ago.

 

-x-

 

"Brat, still here?" He asks, rowing the boat towards shore. He doesn’t know how much time has passed.

Once, he measured time in days, by the movements of the sun and moon. Later, he numbered it in kills, with an idiotic munchkin tallying the count of battles and bodies behind them. 

Now, on the island, it is eternally day. And Gintoki hasn’t had anyone to count his battles in a long time. 

"Since you haven't found a way to get me back," Kagura says. She's squatting on the beach with a fire in front of her.

"That's because there _is_ no way."

"Then I guess I'm here to stay." She throws something at him and he catches it on reflex, looks down to see a charred fish. "I usually have breakfast with my family, but you'll have to do."

Gintoki stares at her for a long moment. Kagura settles on the sand, watching him expectantly, and he sighs, brings the fish to his mouth. "Thanks, brat."

"You'd better bring me sukonbu on your next trip back."

"How many times do I have to tell you I can't?"

"I want sukonbu."

"Maybe if you _went into the afterlife_ ," Gintoki says.

"Maybe if you _got me back_ ," she retorts.

He bites into the fish and feels burnt skin crunch beneath his teeth, tastes smoke and charcoal and meat and is selfishly, _selfishly_ , a little glad that she hasn't moved on yet.

 

-x-

 

The boy is waiting where Kagura was, where almost everyone does. He's sitting by the riverbank, looking like he'd like to dip his feet in the water but is unsure of whether he should. Beneath his glasses, his eyes are a warm, gentle brown, hard like polished wood and gleaming with intelligence. 

"Am I dead?" He asks, lifting his head as Gintoki approaches. 

"Nah, you're still sitting here, aren't you? Whatever _you_ are is still alive; your body's dead, though."

"Where am I?" The boy asks, then he tilts his head, looking up. Above them, the sky is a cloudy grey. "No. What am I?"

"You're a soul," Gintoki says.

"Oh," the boy says. He glances back towards the world of the living. "Is there any way to go back?"

"No."

The boy chews his lip, eyes turning darker and more anxious. "What if I just tried to walk back?"

"You'd get lost in the mist," Gintoki says, "and wander in circles until the demons come and drag you to hell." (And that won't take long, not today. He can feel it - the cold, ugly pull of an ominous presence lurking in the mist. If he doesn't hurry, he'll have to defend the boy while fighting a horde of demons.)

The boy's jaw clenches. Suddenly Gintoki can see the _spirit_ in him, clear as the sun on a hot summer’s day. His brown eyes are as hard as steel. 

Gintoki sighs, raising his bokuto to parry as the boy strikes.

 

-x-

 

He drops the tied-up kid ( _Shinpachi_ , he’d muttered, sullen and annoyed. _Shimura Shinpachi_ ) on the beach and orders him to take care of Kagura. The kid has _responsible_ and _sensible_ written all over him.

But Kagura can apparently bull through even that, because-

"Brat."

"Yeah?" Shinpachi and Kagura say together, looking up. Gintoki scowls. 

“When I told you to take care of her, I wanted you to drag her to the afterlife, not _keep her company on the beach_!"

"Then you should have said," Shinpachi says, shrugging and picking up his skewer of fish. "It's too late now, Kagura-chan's convinced me to stay."

"What."

"We're not moving until you find a way for us to get back."

" _There is no way._ "

"Looks like we'll be here for a while, Kagura-chan," Shinpachi says. "We should just eat his share of fish."

"Wait what? Oi! Oi, dammit, that's mine!"

(They laugh and laugh and laugh and it’s _different_ , it’s not the same as blue eyes and _ahahahaha_ , but it’s good and happy and warm all the same.)

 

-x-

 

He keeps trying to chase them away, but they keep fiercely, stubbornly refusing to go.

Shinpachi is naggy and Kagura is bullheaded; between them, Gintoki ends up building sandcastles, gets buried in warm sand and dragged into crystalline waters to swim - and somewhere in the middle of it he realises that he is really, truly terrible at his job.

Because, for all his screeching about the afterlife, he doesn’t actually want them to leave.

And if this is the closest thing to heaven he gets- it’s good enough for him.

 

-x

 

“This is a nice place,” Shinpachi says, dropping to sit by Gintoki’s side on the sun-warm sand.

“I guess,” Gintoki agrees, looking at the beach and the lake, at blue and gold spilled together in a facsimile of paradise.

It _is_ paradise, Gintoki supposes. But not for him. Never for him, and it’s only _fair_ , really, when he had a chance of salvation a long long time ago and didn’t catch hold, didn’t catch tight. 

There’s a story Gintoki could tell them, these kids with their bright smiles and warm eyes. A story about an angel who Fell to save three demons, who dragged them out of hell with a smile and a kind laugh. A story about chances missed and debts never paid, wasted sacrifices and unkept promises, stupid and shitty and not worth the toilet paper it was printed on.

( _Gintoki_ wasn’t worth it, wasting that chance, and yet…)

“It would be nice if we could stay here forever,” Shinpachi says, smiling up at the sky. 

“Don’t be stupid, brat. This isn’t where you’re meant to be.”

“It isn’t where you’re supposed to be, either,” Kagura declares, flopping onto the sand in a miniature explosion of gold. 

“Haaah? This is my job, dammit.”

“But it’s not where you’re _meant_ to be.”

Gintoki sighs. “Then where am I meant to be, oh wise all-knowing brat?” He twists the words with a sarcastic sneer, but Kagura’s answer, when it comes, is matter-of-fact.

“Stupid Gin-chan. You’re meant to be with us.”

(...Yet these stupid brats keep saying things _just like that_ and every single time, something in Gintoki’s stupid chest unfurls, remembering what it means to be saved.)

 

-x-

 

And then the summons comes.

The messenger arrives in the form of a white crow, swooping to land on the edge of his boat. 

“The heavens say that it’s time,” it croaks.

Gintoki feels his stomach drop to the bottom of his feet because _dammit_ , he’s been to hell before, and he’s not scared of death or demons but-

He glances back at the white-gold sand of the beach; at the small figures playing beneath the bright blue sky.

He wishes he’d had more time. 

 

-x-

 

“What do you mean you’ve gotta go?” Kagura’s eyes are wide.

“I’m retiring,” Gintoki says. “I’m going to my own afterlife.”

“Where are you going?” Shinpachi asks. “Can we come?”

Somehow, that shakes him to the core. “Hell. Get into your afterlives already, brats.”

“Why’re you going to hell?!” Kagura looks like she’s burning, blazing with anger and ferocity. 

“I’m a demon,” Gintoki says. 

“You’re too soft to be a demon.” Kagura folds her arms. “Come back here. Let’s go into the afterlife together.”

He wants to. He _wants_ it, so badly it hurts, but- “I can’t.” He shrugs, turning to go. “Bye.”

“Gin-san!” 

Against his will, he looks back. Kagura and Shinpachi are standing to shoulder, steely-eyed. “We’ll be waiting,” Shinpachi says.

And Gintoki should _go_ , should tell them, _stop being stupid_ , but-

-he can't. Damn it all, but he _can't_.

“Aa,” he says. “I’ll find you.”

It’s worth it, to see their smiles.

 

-x-

 

He’s judged before heaven’s council, and, surprisingly enough, doesn’t end up straight back in hell.

Instead, he’s standing at a misty riverbank. The bank is covered in long-overgrown grass, and the water is glassy, eerily still. He looks down at his reflection: his eyes aren’t demon-bright red, but dark enough to pass as brown. 

He hears the familiar sound of a paddle dipping into the water. Looking up, he sees a guy with bright blue eyes and a mess of black hair rowing towards him.

“Get on,” he says. “I’ll take over from here.”

He feels something like hope welling in his chest, but no, it can’t be-

-the boat passes out of the fog, and he hears them laughing, warmer than the sunshine on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> This is really late (what is new), but it was my contribution to "Samurai Heart: A Gintama Fanzine"!! Many many many millions of thanks to nyatsuma, petitbabelfish, kuraiamore, and charmingstrangeness, who spent so much time and effort helping me make my fic better (and squish it into the word count)!!!! I was BLOWN AWAY by how kind and imaginative and fun every one of them was, and working on the fanzine with all of them was just incredible! Plus, their feedback was amazing and I was so much more satisfied with my piece after they helped me put everything together <3 their pieces are all incredible and I 1000000/10 recommend them!
> 
> You can get the zine here! everything in it is amazing so i doubt you'll regret! http://gintamazine.storenvy.com/ 
> 
> Hope ya'll enjoy :) Please let me know what you think - I'm always looking to improve.
> 
> God bless!


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